Team Owners

Roughly once a month, the NBA cuts 31 checks to NBA teams as revenue from its multibillion-dollar national television contract. There are only 30 NBA franchises, so who gets the extra check? The money goes to brothers Ozzie and Dan Silna, co-owners of the long-forgotten ABA team, the Spirits of St. Louis. Thirty years ago, Ozzie Silna, with attorney Donald Schupak, negotiated a deal that cleared the way for the ABA to merge with the NBA.

INDIANAPOLIS - In a back room inside garage stall A-5 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, just off Gasoline Alley, A.J. Foyt sits at a cramped lunch table entertaining friends and co-workers. The 78-year-old Foyt shifts in his chair carefully, having had lower-back surgery a month ago. But the famously temperamental Texan is calm and smiling amid the clanking sounds of mechanics tweaking his team's race cars nearby. "It feels good" to be back for this year's Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, Foyt said.

John Ziegler's tenure as NHL president began in 1977 with cantankerous Harold Ballard mocking him, in public, as an "office clerk" and a "know-nothing shrimp." Such comments by the late owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs became much of the soundtrack for Ziegler's tumultuous 15-year reign as the league's president. Ziegler, 58, is expected to announce today that he will resign on Sept. 30.

Shawnee Mission District Stadium in Overland Park, Kansas, isn't the kind of place most people associate with sporting history. A fake-turf football field ringed by a synthetic track and grandstands seating just 6,150, the nondescript stadium's main tenants are a pair of local high schools. But Shawnee Mission played host Saturday to the inaugural match of the National Women's Soccer League, a star-studded eight-team professional league that is promising to change the landscape for the sport in North America.

I walked into the penthouse reception prepared to skewer Donald Sterling. But I had barely gotten through the door when I wound up in a group hug with the Clippers' owner and the NBA's top draft pick, heartthrob Blake Griffin. Sterling might be a tight-fisted egomaniac, but he's also smart enough to know that it's hard to savage a man in print when he introduces you to the crowd as the "beautiful, fabulous writer for the Los Angeles Times. Here to make life better for underprivileged kids."

Tampa Bay Devil Ray Manager Lou Piniella, wearying after a recent run of blowout losses and embarrassing performances, ripped the last-place team's ownership Sunday for not caring about winning now. Piniella said the New York-based owners who bought a controlling share of the perennially poor-performing franchise a year ago don't seem to care about Tampa Bay's current on-field product. "They're not interested in the present, they're interested in the future. And that's their right," he said.

Milwaukee Bucks basketball team owner Herbert Kohl defeated former Wisconsin Gov. Anthony S. Earl in a Democratic primary Tuesday for the seat of retiring Sen. William Proxmire. State Sen. Susan Engeleiter won the Republican race. With 84% of precincts reporting, Kohl had 217,568 votes, or 46%, and Earl had 179,603 votes, or 38%. In other results of primary voting in six states, Vermont's moderate Republican Rep.

The San Diego Thunder of the World Indoor Football League on Thursday released a list of 10 team owners, one of whom is Gene Klein, former owner of the Chargers. The team also announced that Don Coryell, former Charger coach, will be a coaching consultant and that Nate Wright, a former NFL defensive back, will be the defensive coordinator. According to the Thunder, the owners are: Klein; Dirk Broekema, chairman of Bowest Corp.

A welfare system exists in this country that transfers hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers to wealthy investors and their extraordinarily well-paid employees. Who are these individuals profiting from this life on the dole? They are the owners of North America's professional sports teams and the athletes who play in each of the four major sports leagues. --Opening words of "Major League Losers," a new book by Indiana University Professor Mark S.

The NFL and the NHL are household abbreviations and their events dominate the TV screen. By contrast, Bob Frazier of Chatsworth has spent the last six years peddling the NCL, which is less widely known and is seen on TV only about a dozen times a year. NCL stands for the National Cycle League, which began in 1989 and was designed to make bicycle races attractive to U.S. audiences and sponsors.

It took several cups of coffee and a couple of hours one recent morning to realize there was still so much more to know about Jerry Buss. The coffee was shared with Bob Steiner, Buss' longtime public relations advisor and general confidant. We reminisced and rambled. There were the general pearls: "He could never accept rebuilding," Steiner said. "That was him. " There were curtains drawn back on his way of doing business: "Some of his business friends thought he was a terrible negotiator," Steiner said.

At Jerry Buss' memorial service Feb. 21, more than a dozen speakers honored the longtime Lakers owner, who died Feb. 18 at age 80 after a battle with cancer. Below are some of the highlights from the service, which included speeches by some current and former Lakers legends. MAGIC JOHNSON Johnson played for the Lakers from 1979 to 1991 and returned in the 1995-96 season. He and Buss hung out often, but Johnson didn't realize just how close they had become until he contracted HIV. "When I announced HIV, I knew he was really a father figure in my life," Johnson said.

The stage was filled with flowers and gold. The audience was filled with short skirts and diamonds. Davis Gaines elegantly sang "Music of the Night," while, on the screen behind him, there appeared a photo of Jerry and Jimmy Buss crooning karaoke. Several members of the USC marching band played "Amazing Grace," but they did so while wearing their sunglasses. The first song was from "Toy Story," the last song was from Sinatra, and in between, the stage flashed photos of Jerry Buss hanging out with his grandchildren, his buddy Hugh Hefner, and his poker chips.

The Lakers, a city treasure that sports one of the NBA's highest payrolls and generations of loyal fans, are said to be worth an estimated $1 billion. But will they remain the property of the Buss family after team owner Jerry Buss' death Monday? AEG Chairman Philip Anschutz, who owns Staples Center, the Kings and 27% of the Lakers, has the right of first refusal if the Buss family wants to sell the franchise, according to spokesmen from both AEG and the Lakers. Buss purchased the team in 1979.

Experienced negotiators and federal mediators couldn't resolve the labor dispute that threatens to consume the 2012-13 NHL season, so Thursday the league proposed putting the stalemate directly in the hands of players and owners. Sessions conducted by officials of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service produced no agreement between the league and the NHL Players' Assn., leaving in place the lockout the NHL imposed on Sept. 15. After Thursday's talks, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman proposed arranging a meeting that would exclude executives on both sides and allow owners and players to have an unfiltered exchange of ideas.

NFL replacement officials are making a lot of mistakes in games, have you heard? Of course you have. Because the NFL blew the handling of this labor fight, and suddenly the officiating of games - which should be an afterthought - has been shoved to center stage. Sometimes, the games go smoothly, as Giants-Panthers did Thursday night. But other times, they're a fiasco, lurching along with stoppages and zebra huddles every few plays. The first quarter of Monday night's Broncos-Falcons game lasted almost one hour, and felt like two. There have been awkward truths too, like finding out the line judge assigned to the Saints-Panthers game was actually a Saints fan, and had the Facebook pictures to prove it (he was relieved of his duties before the game)

Players get to the pros by virtue of skill and hard work. They put their bodies on the line each time they step on the field. They get paid accordingly. If they don't perform they are soon gone. Team owners get to own teams by virtue of birth or marriage as often as anything else. If they make poor decisions and produce a bad product they have another option. They threaten to leave.

Marty Schottenheimer quit as Cleveland Browns coach Tuesday after refusing to relinquish his role as offensive coordinator. Schottenheimer and Brown owner Art Modell said the coach was departing by mutual agreement. "It became evident that some of the differences we had, we weren't going to be able to resolve," Schottenheimer said. "We came to an agreement that it was in everybody's best interest that we part company. I appreciate the opportunity Art gave me to become a head coach.

Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew is unhappy with comments made by team owner Shad Khan about his 28-day holdout. “Maurice wants to play for an organization that wants him and for an owner who respects him and values what he brings to a team - on the field, in the locker room and in the community,” Jones-Drew's agent, Adisa Bakari, told the Associated Press. Last week, Khan said that Jones-Drew's holdout "doesn't even move the needle” in terms of stress on the team and that he had better return to training camp because “[the]

SAN DIEGO — Based on his conversations with the Dodgers' new owners, General Manager Ned Colletti expects to have more financial flexibility at the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline than he's had in recent years. "If we have a chance to improve our club, they're open-minded to doing it and everything that it entails," Colletti said. That could mean making significant additions to the payroll. President Stan Kasten recently acknowledged the Dodgers "don't have the warehouse of prospects we wish we had. " Without prospects to trade, the Dodgers probably won't be able to make any meaningful acquisitions unless they agree to inherit millions of dollars in salaries from non-contenders looking to shed payroll.